Sometimes, a guy just feels old.

It’s easy for me to think that way every time I catch myself saying: “If only that was around when I was a kid ...”

So many things exist in today’s sports world that simply weren’t there when I was expending so much energy in my younger days.

For example:

Dek hockey rinks

How my buddies and I could have used one of those!

We loved playing street hockey whether it be against each other or as a team playing against another neighborhood.

Problem was, we had to play our games in a parking lot or on a school playground. We’d set up the nets and have at it.

Play was stopped quite often, though. Every time someone would shoot the ball or puck wide of the net, we’d have to go retrieve it. For that matter, each errant pass that skipped off the playing surface caused a stoppage as well. Playing dek hockey in an enclosed court would have been a blast.

Disc golf

Tossing a frisbee was one of my past-times for years. We set up “frisbee football” games, now known as ultimate frisbee. One game we invented involved four players — two on each team.

One team would stand on our driveway.

The other team would stand on the neighbor’s driveway on the other side of our yard.

The object was to throw the frisbee so it would land in the neighbor’s yard behind the driveway you were standing on.

The frisbee could hit the grass on a fly, it could bounce in or roll past the other team. Each time you “landed” a shot, your team got a point. First one to 10 points wins.

Of course, we could only play this game when our neighbors weren’t home.

Lacrosse

I grew up a baseball player, as did most of my friends.

We had never heard of lacrosse. But we would have loved it. The sport is high energy and seems to be a combination of football and hockey. It has a net, goalies and it’s physical.

It’s definitely a game my generation missed out on.

High school bowling

It’s hard to believe it took so long for this sport to become part of high school athletics.

Anyone can be a bowler.

You can be tall, you can be short, you can be strong, you can be weak, you can be heavy, you can be thin. It doesn’t matter.

High school bowling teams afford any kid who so desires the opportunity to don his or her school colors and experience the pride of competing while representing the school.

Saturday morning youth bowling leagues were around when I was a kid and I took part.

That was enjoyable, but I was bowling for me. Bowling as part of a high school team would have been a cool feeling.

Playing baseball all day and diving for frisbees was all good. Still, I feel like I missed out somewhat.

Can’t have everything, I guess.

John Enrietto is sports editor of the Butler Eagle